Coroner considering inquiry into Mississauga daycare death

BRAMPTON — The office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario is considering launching an inquest into the death of Duy-An Nguyen, the 14-month-old girl who died of injuries allegedly suffered at the hands of an unlicenced Mississauga daycare operator last week.

An inquest into how Duy-An died would seek to generate recommendations regarding Ontario’s daycare industry with the hope of preventing deaths under similar circumstances, said Coroner’s office spokeswoman Cheryl Mahyr.

The suspect in Duy-An’s death, 35-year-old April Luckese, made a brief court appearance in Brampton Tuesday and was remanded into custody until January 21.

Peel Regional Police had originally charged Ms. Luckese, a mother of two and owner of April’s Daycare, with aggravated assault after responding to a 911 call around 4 p.m. Wednesday coming from a townhome on Asta Drive, near the intersection of Queen Elizabeth Way and Cawthra Road in Mississauga.

It was here that police found baby Duy-An suffering from reported head injuries. She was rushed to hospital, but died two days later at the Hospital for Sick Children after being taken off life support, at which point police upgraded Ms. Luckese’s charge to second-degree murder. If convicted, she faces life imprisonment.

Only 20% of children in Ontario have access to regulated daycare space, according to the Ontario Federation of Labour, which called on the Coroner’s office Tuesday to launch an inquest and asked the province’s education ministry to launch an investigation into the “systemic conditions” that force parents to use unlicensed and unregulated child-care facilities.

Unlicenced facilities are not subject to government inspections or regulations and are only allowed to look after a maximum of five children.

The Federation says daycares in Ontario are not subsidized like those in Manitoba and Quebec, meaning parents in this province pay thousands per year for each child, making child care prohibitively expensive.

The lack of regulation across the child-care industry puts many children at risk, says Andrea Calver, co-ordinator of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.

“Most people who go into child care do it because they love children. But in an unlicenced environment there are no rules or regulations,” Ms. Calver said. “Many of these providers advertise themselves on the Internet as ‘daycare centres’ but they’re certainly not your neighbour or grandmother.”

Gary Wheeler, a spokesman for the Ontario education ministry, which is responsible for licencing child-care facilities, says it only conducts inspections of unlicenced facilities if complaints are received.
“Informal child care is a private arrangement between the parents and the caregiver,” he said.